Okay,

Im doing this for a friend's computer. Its relatively new, an HP Pavillion 555e. The DVD drive WORKS perfectly, but the CD-R/RW drive, (which is a CyberDrv CW088D CD-R/RW) is driving me nuts. It doesnt read ANYTHING, no cds of any type, Ive tried. The weird thing is, Ive updated the drivers, and when I uninstalled then reinstalled the drive, I restarted and a little bubble came up that said "New hardware found" so I clicked the bubble and nothing happened. When I tried to burn a cd, it just ejected the blank disk I put in and said that I needed to insert a blank disk...needless to say this is how I found out it doesnt read anything. I ran some sort of check up on it with the HP Troubleshooting guide, and it said to update the drivers which I had already DONE! Device Manager says the drive is WORKING perfectly. The computer seems to think the drive is fine, no error mesages every come up about this and when I look in properties of the drive the status is "This device is working properly." Its ENABLED also, so thats not it.
Im thinking it may have never been formatted, which I dont know how to do. Is there anything else I should be looking at?

Please HELP!

Which operating system are you using? Do you have virus and Spyware protection? When did this start? Have you made any changes to your system recently?

FlameIf it's"relatively new" is it under warranty?Has this drive ever worked? Think WARRANTY. Operating sytem is Windows XP Home Edition, virus and spyware protection- no (recommendations?), the drive has never worked according to my friend and no changes minor or major have taken place recently.
So I suppose I should find out about the warranty? But before I do so, is there any way I can find out if its just some malfunction?It opbviously is a malfunction if it has never worked. Let HP fix what they sold him. You could replace the whole drive at your expense, but why?